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Secure your secrets at scale with GitHub

Leaked credentials expose your organization to data breaches. GitHub Secret Protection detects and prevents secret leaks automatically. Follow this adoption path to assess risk, pilot the solution, and scale protection organization-wide.

1

Quick start: Essential reading

5 Articles

New to secret protection? Start here for the most important concepts and procedures. These articles provide foundational knowledge to help you understand secret risks, evaluate GitHub Secret Protection (GHSP), and begin your adoption journey.

  1. Secret leakage risks
  2. About secret scanning
  3. Interpreting secret risk assessment results
  4. Assessing the impact of GitHub Secret Protection
  5. About push protection
2

Phase 1: Assess your current secret risk

4 Articles10 minutes to run, 30 minutes to analyze results

Run a free secret risk assessment (SRA) to understand your organization exposure and establish baseline metrics. Before purchasing GHSP, identify how many secrets are exposed across your organization and build a data-driven business case for the investment.

  1. Secret leakage risks
  2. Running the secret risk assessment for your organization
  3. Interpreting secret risk assessment results
  4. Viewing your security risk assessment reports
3

Phase 2: Evaluate GitHub Secret Protection

5 Articles2-4 hours

Determine if GHSP meets your needs and build a business case. Review detection capabilities, push protection features, and validity checking. Use the pricing calculator to estimate costs and calculate potential cost savings from preventing manual remediation.

  1. About secret scanning
  2. About push protection
  3. Supported secret scanning patterns
  4. Estimating the price of Secret Protection
  5. Calculating the cost savings of push protection
4

Phase 3: Pilot GitHub Secret Protection

4 Articles2-4 weeks

Run a pilot to validate GHSP with a small set of repositories before organization-wide enablement. Select 5-10 repositories with active development and known secret exposure. If you estimated pricing in Phase 2, you'll confirm costs as part of the enablement flow. A successful pilot demonstrates security value quickly, identifies workflow adjustments, and gathers feedback to refine your rollout strategy.

  1. Best practices for selecting pilot repositories
  2. Pricing and enabling GitHub Secret Protection
  3. Enabling push protection for your repository
  4. Remediating a leaked secret in your repository
5

Phase 4: Monitor and assess value

3 Articles1-2 hours per week during pilot

Track metrics to demonstrate ROI and identify areas for improvement. Monitor how many secrets are being detected, how often developers bypass push protection, and how quickly leaked secrets are remediated. Use these insights to refine your rollout strategy, prove value to stakeholders, and justify organization-wide deployment.

  1. Assessing the impact of GitHub Secret Protection
  2. Secret scanning push protection metrics
  3. Evaluating alerts from secret scanning
6

Phase 5: Scale, customize, and automate

4 Articles1-2 weeks for initial rollout, ongoing for optimization

Expand GHSP organization-wide and tailor it to your specific workflows. Use validity checks to prioritize remediation, define custom patterns for organization-specific secrets, and apply security configurations at scale. For advanced use cases, enable AI-powered detection and integrate with automated workflows.

  1. Applying a custom security configuration
  2. Defining custom patterns for secret scanning
  3. Enabling delegated bypass for push protection
  4. Enabling secret scanning for non-provider patterns
1

Quick start: Essential reading

5 Articles

New to secret protection? Start here for the most important concepts and procedures. These articles provide foundational knowledge to help you understand secret risks, evaluate GitHub Secret Protection (GHSP), and begin your adoption journey.

  1. Secret leakage risks
  2. About secret scanning
  3. Interpreting secret risk assessment results
  4. Assessing the impact of GitHub Secret Protection
  5. About push protection
2

Phase 1: Assess your current secret risk

4 Articles10 minutes to run, 30 minutes to analyze results

Run a free secret risk assessment (SRA) to understand your organization exposure and establish baseline metrics. Before purchasing GHSP, identify how many secrets are exposed across your organization and build a data-driven business case for the investment.

  1. Secret leakage risks
  2. Running the secret risk assessment for your organization
  3. Interpreting secret risk assessment results
  4. Viewing your security risk assessment reports
3

Phase 2: Evaluate GitHub Secret Protection

5 Articles2-4 hours

Determine if GHSP meets your needs and build a business case. Review detection capabilities, push protection features, and validity checking. Use the pricing calculator to estimate costs and calculate potential cost savings from preventing manual remediation.

  1. About secret scanning
  2. About push protection
  3. Supported secret scanning patterns
  4. Estimating the price of Secret Protection
  5. Calculating the cost savings of push protection
4

Phase 3: Pilot GitHub Secret Protection

4 Articles2-4 weeks

Run a pilot to validate GHSP with a small set of repositories before organization-wide enablement. Select 5-10 repositories with active development and known secret exposure. If you estimated pricing in Phase 2, you'll confirm costs as part of the enablement flow. A successful pilot demonstrates security value quickly, identifies workflow adjustments, and gathers feedback to refine your rollout strategy.

  1. Best practices for selecting pilot repositories
  2. Pricing and enabling GitHub Secret Protection
  3. Enabling push protection for your repository
  4. Remediating a leaked secret in your repository
5

Phase 4: Monitor and assess value

3 Articles1-2 hours per week during pilot

Track metrics to demonstrate ROI and identify areas for improvement. Monitor how many secrets are being detected, how often developers bypass push protection, and how quickly leaked secrets are remediated. Use these insights to refine your rollout strategy, prove value to stakeholders, and justify organization-wide deployment.

  1. Assessing the impact of GitHub Secret Protection
  2. Secret scanning push protection metrics
  3. Evaluating alerts from secret scanning
6

Phase 5: Scale, customize, and automate

4 Articles1-2 weeks for initial rollout, ongoing for optimization

Expand GHSP organization-wide and tailor it to your specific workflows. Use validity checks to prioritize remediation, define custom patterns for organization-specific secrets, and apply security configurations at scale. For advanced use cases, enable AI-powered detection and integrate with automated workflows.

  1. Applying a custom security configuration
  2. Defining custom patterns for secret scanning
  3. Enabling delegated bypass for push protection
  4. Enabling secret scanning for non-provider patterns